Some people like to have their header art or banners change with every page reload, making their site look different on each page visit. Some people want to showcase their artwork or photography by having a image change randomly as a visitor moves through the site. Others want to feature posts from the past or random posts on the front page of their blog to bring some attention back to your past posts. And then there are the famous quotes. We bloggers just love adding random quotes to our blogs.

If you are one of those blogging people who love randomness, here is how you can randomize the banners, header art, images, quotes, posts, and more on your blog with WordPress Plugins as part of the month long series on WordPress Plugins.

Random Images WordPress Plugins

Random images are one of the most popular methods of using random features on most blogs. An easy-to-use script or Plugin would allow you to put all your images into a single directory, and then the script would randomly display the images only within that directory, similar to the “Eye Candy” image I use in this blog’s sidebar. The image is created by putting the link to the script in a text widget, and the link initiates the script when the page loads, changing images with each refresh or page load.

You can use this method as a background image in your stylesheet, too. Just put in the link as you would any other graphic link. When the page reloads, the image changes automatically. It’s a simple but great method to show off your images in a small way.

Others are more sophisticated, so experiment to see which works for you. Take care to make sure these will work in the latest version of WordPress.

Header Image Rotator WordPress Plugin allows you to add an unlimited number of header images in just about any file type. You can control the rotation intervals precisely, even to changing daily or weekly. Images can be previewed and deleted from the Administration Panels.

Here are some other random image WordPress Plugins that will rotate image and graphic ads and banners:

Random Posts, Past Posts, A Step Back in Time

While some blog posts are timely and only apply to the hear and now, many bloggers write worthwhile material that has years and years of life. So why not reach back into the archives and dust off some old posts with a random post generating WordPress Plugin.

Random Link Button WordPress Plugin adds a button with a link to your blog that directs the visitor to a different random site off your blog each time pressed. The list of random locations is in your Blogroll list. This could be a fun way of surprising visitors with new great blog reads.

Random Quotes and Text

I love quotes. I’ve been collecting them since I was a small child. I’m sure there is a room in hell filled with tiny scraps of paper with scribbled clever sayings, witty references, and brilliant bursts of literacy just for me. One of my favorites I collected as a teenager still stumps me, but I love it: Ice cream don’t grow hair.

It was natural for me to want to feature random quotes on my WordPress blog, as it is for many. In the beginning, there was only one WordPress Plugin that offered the ability to easily add random text to your blog, Witty Text. Development on that has stopped and I finally found WP Random Quotes Generator by Dustin Barnes. It is very easy to use and allows adding and controlling your random quotes or text from the WordPress Administration Panels. It features a lot of options to configure your random quotes. You can then add the Plugin template tag to your WordPress Theme to put the random text in your header, footer, sidebar, or wherever you want.

JPF Quotes WordPress Plugin displays random quotes with an image, possibly of the person saying the quote, on your WordPress blog. It includes quotes and images from The Simpsons television show to get you started.

Randomize WordPress Plugin allows you to create any random content on your blog such as quotes, images, header art, random links, or whatever. It is customizable and can be split into categories so you can use multiple versions of this Plugin on your blog.

Random File WordPress Plugin retrieves the name of a randomly chosen file in specific directory and displays the contents. This is great or displaying random images, graphics, or text into your blog.

Thanks for the catch. A quick Google search found that he has a new site, but the comments say that this Plugin no longer works for the most recent version of WordPress. Hopefully, if there is enough interest, he will upgrade the Plugin.

It makes it hard when people misspell Plugin as plug-in, which sometimes makes it harder to find their Plugins.

Hey Lorelle, Great post, except the Random Image plugin I am looking for has a dead link (well, most of the Random Image scripts on this page have dead links). The one I want that is perfect (Photo Matt’s) but is giving me an Internal Server Error that I have been unable to fix. Rawr, looks like I will have to create own plugin! Have a good one.

Hi Lorelle- I have just one question and I’m sure it has an easy answer but so far it has eluded me. How do you get things like a sponsor’s banner to show up in WP posts? I write reviews for PayPerPost and had no problem with this at Blogger but since I’ve moved to my own domain and am using WP, I can’t get banners or graphics to show up in my posts. I’d sure appreciate it if you know the solution for this! Thanks!

The proper way to create “sidebars” within the post content area is within a CSS style DIV or Class. WordPress.com blogs cannot use inline styles so I created these with tables, as explained in the series on WordPress.com Blog Bling. I hope that helps.

Hi there,
Know anyone which plugin to use if I want only the first part (first paragraph) of the article to be displayed? If someone want to read more there will be a “read more” link…
On my blog right now is displayed all of article content and I don’t want this…
I’m talking about the latest 10 articles displayed on the first page of my blog.
I’m using WordPress.
Can anyone help?

My goodness, you are asking all over the place. :D There is no Plugin. It is a built in function of WordPress. Just use the “more” button on the Write Post panel to insert <--more--> into the post where you want it cut off and it will then cut it off at that point and show “Continue Reading” or something similar on the front page of your blog.

In the future, please search the WordPress Support Forums and leave only one comment asking for help instead of asking all over the place. It just saves time for everyone and you only have to check back to one spot.

There are a variety of Theme switching Plugins that will switch for a variety of reasons, some of which might be because of dates. Haven’t tried them, so I have no recommendations. You can also write a conditional tag script that will switch Themes based upon dates.

Thanks Lorelle.. but my above post was partial. Means i dont know whether it was my mistake or it was trimmed by blog authority.
So, i m posting it again.
——————
I want header that rotates when button is pressed.
For example, as in [www dot bartendaznyc dot com]
That is little different from above options.

Again, my answer is the same. There are options in the Plugins listed above, and you can search online, but I’ve used the ones I’ve noted above, which reload with the page, and I’ve tried Theme switchers that change the look of the page, which could include the header art, but I do not recommend them. While you might find these enjoyable, they are not used by readers. It’s a great deal of additional unnecessary code that few ever use. It’s a fun gimmick, but a time waster.

So I guess my answer is I don’t know of a specific Plugin that does what you want, other than what is in this article. Ask the author of the site what they use, I guess. Sorry I can’t be more helpful.

I’m using ad rotator plugin in all of my websites.. The beauty is this will decrease down the ad blindness and users tends to click more on ads..More over other benefit is I can keep track of CTR and check which ad is performing well and remove the non performer..
My Kudos to this plugin

Help – need some kind of link rotator… I want to market one site and equally share leads through out the team by rotating everyone’s personal link behind the “sign-up” image. (So every time someone clicks on the link… the next time it rotates to the next person’s link in order)

What wordpress plugin would accomplish that task.
Any suggestions would be appreciated.

There are a variety of rotators, some mentioned in this post. There is also the Plugin that creates the random posts within a WordPressMU/Blog Network used by WordPress.com that I believe is available. What you are asking for is fairly sophisticated, though, so your best bet is to hire someone to develop that Plugin. Check out http://codepoet.org/ for a list of developers.

Does anyone know if there is a plugin or another way to have alternating content on the homepage. I want a static homepage, but I want the content to change a bit on each page load. Maybe have 3-4 pages that will be used and randomly load a different page each visit.

There are a variety of ways to do this so check this article and others on the WordPress Plugin Directory and in the Codex looking for conditional tags with dates. As a side recommendation, people can spot random and feel suspicious about it. If you generate the content based upon conditional tags, you can serve up related or specific content, which is smarter.

Plugins are cool but is quite unfortunate for those using wordpress.com cause i cant even install anything in the blog and its so hard to get seo but i manage to do some little tricks to get into search engines depending on my content….

WordPress.com uses Plugins – ones they have vetted and approved. You just don’t have to install them, just enable and use the features or not.

As for what tricks you need to get into search engines, you’ve been reading the wrong blogs. WordPress is very search engine friendly – beyond any tricks you need to do. Write well, write with focus and purpose and clearly communicate and you need no “tricks” to get into search engines. However, you might need some tricks to keep people interested and coming back for more. That’s the REAL trick.

Thank you for this post. I need a banner that will change the images automatically without having to refresh the page, is it possible? That plugin is Flash and doesn’t work on iPhone, that’s why I am looking for something else and I hope to find a banner as good as that one, but with no luck at the moment :(.

There are WordPress Plugins like these described in the article for self-hosted versions of WordPress. You cannot use WordPress Plugins on WordPress.com. If you are using the Twenty-Eleven WordPress Theme, you can set the header art to rotate with every page refresh randomly as part of the functionality of that Theme. There are other Themes with random header art options, so check them out.

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[…] draft. But I thought of it while I was researching the last section. I ran into this post on random WordPress widgets. I like a little bit of randomness. I don’t think you can have everything so planned that a […]